1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical disk recording and reproducing apparatus, a remote controller for this optical disk recording and reproducing apparatus, and a content management method using these. More specifically, the present invention relates to an optical disk recording and reproducing apparatus, a remote controller, and a content management method capable of allowing a user to easily confirm contents recorded on an optical disk.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years, there have been developed and used various types of optical disks such as music CD (Compact Disc), CD-R (Recordable)/RW (ReWritable), DVD-ROM (Digital Versatile Disk-Read Only Memory), DVD±R/RW, and Blu-ray Disc. At the same time, there is a spreading use of such apparatuses as universal disk players and DVD recorders that can use various types of optical disks and perform reproduction and recording in a standalone fashion.
These apparatuses use various types of optical disks as mentioned above and may need to determine the type of a mounted optical disk. Accordingly, considerable time is spent between mounting an optical disk and starting to record or reproduce its content. There has been a problem of user unfriendliness.
Recently, it is a general practice to record contents such as video on optical disks using DVD recorders and personal computers (PCs). When using a recordable optical disk, for example, a user can handwrite or print details of the recorded contents on the disk's label surface or a sheet inside the case. It is very cumbersome for the user to handwrite or print the recording contents each time he or she records contents on a disk. The only possible alternative to confirm details of the recorded contents may be to actually mount an optical disk on a recorder or a player, reproduce recorded data, and display a menu screen to select the contents, for example. Consequently, as mentioned above, considerable time is spent between mounting the optical disk and making it ready for reproduction. It takes a long time to find the content the user wants to enjoy out of many optical disks, degrading the usability.
A system is proposed to solve such problem (e.g., see patent document 1). The system provides a noncontact storage device integrally with a recording medium for contents so that the storage device stores information about the content. A remote controller is used to noncontactly read the information from the storage device and display the information. The storage device may represent a so-called RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tag using a semiconductor chip, for example.
[Patent document] JP-A No. 67842/2001 (paragraphs [0023] to [0054], FIG. 1)